Eisenhower to Seek Liberalization of Immigration Law in 1956

December 20, 1955

NEW YORK (Dec. 19)

President Eisenhower and his Administration will be making “new and strong recommendations” to Congress in 1956 for revision of existing immigration laws, it was stated here last night by Maxwell M. Rabb, secretary to the President’s Cabinet. Mr. Rabb was the guest speaker at the first anniversary dinner of the United Hias Service.

Stating that the present U.S. immigration policy was alienating people in overseas countries whereas it could be “an important weapon in the arsenal of the cold war.” Mr. Rabb said that this country needs the talents offered by immigrants. “the tailor industry in America, for instance, is in danger of deterioration because we just cannot get enough people to enter this occupation, “he pointed out. New York’s Attorney General Jacob K. Javits echoed Mr. Rabb’s opinions and stated that the “major drive to rewrite the McCarran-Walter Act and to extend the Refugee Relief Act must be put on in 1956.

Ben Touster, president of the United Hias Service, who launched the 1956 campaign for funds for the organization, told the 350 guests who attended the dinner, that “there are still thousands upon thousands of Jews who wait uneasily, fearfully, in the Old World for the chance to immigrate to hospitable countries, to lands where they may rejoin their scattered kin, to lands where they are really wanted, and not just tolerated. He pointed out that “the Jews are no longer in DP camps–instead they are scattered all over, and every one of them has to be helped and extracted out of his hostile surroundings with extreme care and with expert attention to detail, the kind of expert attention that only United Hias Service, with its great combined staff of experienced aides, is equipped to furnish.”

Mr. Rabb was presented with a scroll of honor by Mr. Touster for his efforts in behalf of migrant Jews and his “sympathetic concern for all humanitarian causes. “The dinner-meeting was chaired by Murray I. Gurfein, a leading member of the United Hias board.